The present invention relates to track-following a servo track in a longitudinal tape system, and more particularly, to track-following a servo track in high vibration environments.
Current longitudinal tape drives, such as IBM® LTO Generation 5 tape drives, IBM® 3592E07 tape drives and later among others, have methods to track-follow a servo track. The track-following is performed by monitoring a position error signal (PES) which is produced by comparing a desired position to an actual position of the magnetic head over the tape.
As new tape drives and tape media are developed, track density of the tape media increases to provide more capacity using the same tape width. In order to accomplish this, track widths have become narrower. When these tape media are used, the track following servo of the tape drive has to perform better to properly follow the narrower track width. To achieve this, in conventional systems, the track following servo compensator is enhanced, allowing better performance with narrower track widths. However, the enhanced servo compensator has problems operating in vibration environments because the external vibrations tend to push the head off track while operating the tape drive.